Image capture devices with small physical pixels, such as those in cell phone cameras, are widely used. However, these devices may have difficulty capturing high-quality images in low-light scenarios. For example, one approach to capturing an image in a low-light scenario is to use a long exposure time. However, a long-exposure image may become blurred if the image capture device, such as a handheld phone camera, is in motion. Others have approached this problem by blindly de-blurring a blurred long-exposure image, which requires estimating camera motion and deconvolving the image using the estimated motion. This approach may be computationally difficult, and may also be unsuccessful in creating high-quality images.
Another option is to use a short exposure time, which may reduce blurriness. However, in a low-light scenario, a short exposure time may result in a dark image. In order to brighten this image, the camera sensor gain (ISO) may be increased. However, increasing the ISO of the image in a dark image may result in a noisy image. Another approach to brighten a short-exposure image may be to use flash. However, the flash does not usually help in outdoor scenarios, and flash may also lead to artificial color offsets and decrease the color accuracy in the resulting image.
Accordingly, no camera exposure setting can result in a sharp, bright and noise-free image from a moving camera in a relatively dark scenario.